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Infobox references. Sodium carbonate (also known as washing soda, soda ash and soda crystals) is the inorganic compound with the formula Na2CO3 and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield alkaline solutions in water. Historically, it was extracted from the ashes of plants grown in sodium-rich soils ...
By the 1890s, Solvay-process plants produced the majority of the world's soda ash. In 1938 large deposits of the mineral trona were discovered near the Green River in Wyoming from which sodium carbonate can be extracted more cheaply than produced by the process. The original Solvay New York plant closed in 1986, replaced in the US by a factory ...
The causes of soil alkalinity can be natural or man-made: The natural cause is the presence of soil minerals producing sodium carbonate (Na 2 CO 3) and sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO 3) upon weathering. Coal-fired boilers / power plants, when using coal or lignite rich in limestone, produce ash containing calcium oxide.
Trona (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate, also sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate, Na 2 CO 3 ·NaHCO 3 ·2H 2 O) is a non-marine evaporite mineral. [4] [6] It is mined as the primary source of sodium carbonate in the United States, where it has replaced the Solvay process used in most of the rest of the world for sodium carbonate production.
The soda ash from glasswort plant ashes was mainly a mixture of sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate. In addition in Egypt, naturally occurring sodium carbonate, the mineral natron, was mined from dry lakebeds. In Britain, the only local source of alkali was from kelp, which washed ashore in Scotland and Ireland.
Historically, sodium hydroxide was produced by treating sodium carbonate (usually from seaweed ash or "glasswort"-plant ash) with calcium hydroxide (aka lime) in a metathesis reaction. (Sodium hydroxide is soluble while calcium carbonate is not.) This process was called causticizing. [1]
When these sodium-rich plants are burned, the carbon dioxide that is produced presumably reacts with this sodium to form sodium carbonate. [citation needed] Cells of the boatlily plant Rhoeo discolor. The large pink region in each cell is a vacuole. Sodium is sequestered in vacuoles by halophyte cells.
The kraft process involves treatment of wood chips with a hot mixture of water, sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and sodium sulfide (Na 2 S), known as white liquor, that breaks the bonds that link lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose. The technology entails several steps, both mechanical and chemical. It is the dominant method for producing paper.